By IANS
New Delhi : Tourism Minister Ambika Soni said on the occasion of World Tourism Day Thursday that upgradation of infrastructure and safety of women tourists were the two major challenges they were facing.
“Incidents of rape and molestation of tourists, like the one in Agra recently, are a black mark on our report card. The safety of our tourists is definitely our concern,” she said.
“Around 11-12 state governments have put their tourist police in place to provide special security to tourists. The other states have deployed some men from the normal police force for guarding tourist destinations,” Soni told IANS.
She also said they are ensuring that guides and photographers at tourist destinations have undertaken government certified courses, have licenses and operate within definite areas.
Upgradation of infrastructure and better facilitation of arrival capacity is another of the ministry’s concerns.
“Very often we hear that visitors have to reschedule or cancel their visit here because the flights are full or there is no hotel accommodation,” said Leena Nandan, joint secretary in the ministry.
“Hence, we are working towards opening more hotels, especially budget hotels, to accommodate the large inflow of tourists.”
“We do have ambitious plans with the ministry of urban development under which we have asked for allotment of land to build more hotels. Also, we are giving incentives to build budget hotels, offering subsidies based on the number of rooms and asking the large hotel chains to look into building two- and three-star hotels,” she added.
Although there is a shortage of hotel rooms that tourists are facing in India, certain initiatives such as that taken by the Haryana government or by tea garden managers in the northeast are a breather.
“The Haryana government started farm tourism by which they put up visitors in farm houses giving them an exquisite experience of the farms.
“Similarly, in tea gardens of the northeast, tea tourism is now being promoted by giving out those beautiful tea estate bungalows for tourists to stay in. Such initiatives are sure making a change although we still have a long way to go,” Nandan said.
With the aim of touching a tourist inflow of 1.6 billion by 2020, Soni said there were a whole lot of other targets.
“We need more golf courses, more shopping festivals which will showcase our indigenous craftsmanship to the world, better equipped chefs who will whip up innovative and interesting cuisines every month.
“We need more wellness experts. We also need more domestic tourists. At the moment, the number of domestic tourists touches 400 million a year, but we want more. Also, we want state governments and the private sector to come up with more big revenue generating projects,” Soni said.
“I have all the support from my team in the ministry and the government. So I am sure all the shortcomings will be looked after,” she added.